Chesapeake (100 page)

Paul and Susan Steed were also pleased when their pretty slave began frequenting the forge in which the new hand, Cudjo, slept. They had often speculated as to why this fine woman had never married; at thirty-four she was even prettier than she had been as a young girl. Her reserved, stately bearing excited admiration whenever she appeared at a dinner party to attend Miss Susan.

Everyone remarked on how gentle she was with her crippled mistress, and how she volunteered to do whatever would make Susan’s life easier, and they were amused at how Eden handled Paul Steed. With the passage of years he had lost his querulousness and now accepted the consequences of his extraordinary behavior on the roof. His left leg was shorter than his right, but with the aid of a built-up shoe he walked with only a slight limp, and although his neck did incline sharply toward the right, as if to give his body a compensating balance, it did not prevent him from doing what he loved most: reading the shelves of great books he had acquired at Princeton. Thucydides, Plato, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Locke, Adam Smith, Plutarch—he had become as familiar with their thoughts as if they had lived down the Choptank a few miles and met with him on sunny afternoons.

He had a poor opinion of divines as writers and held the typical collection of sermons to be trash; he enjoyed a good sermon, but since there was no functioning Catholic church close to Devon, he could not indulge that preference very often. The Steed family did, of course, do as it had done through the centuries: invite clergymen to stay at the island and instruct the family in the teachings of Catholicism—and one summer Paul quite astounded the more conservative Steeds by prevailing upon an itinerant Methodist rabble-rouser to spend five days at Devon, preaching to the slaves by day and debating with the Steeds at night. It was an instructive experience, and when the man, a gaunt fellow from Virginia, departed he took with him one hundred dollars contributed by Paul.

The crippled Steed had become, in short, a southern gentleman of the best type: he did no work; he read incessantly; he spent much time contemplating the problems of the South; and he was increasingly infuriated by the basic unfairness of the North-South relationship: ‘The criminals at the North make us sell our wheat and cotton to Europe at cheap prices, but will not permit us to buy our manufactures cheaply from England. No they pass a high tariff, keep out cheap European products and force us to buy from Massachusetts and New York at extremely high prices. Northerners are strangling us, and if they continue, they will place the Union in jeopardy.’

Susan had become a lovely English cameo, a quiet little lady perched in her chair, bestowing on all a calm sweetness. She paid much attention to her dress, wanting always to look her prettiest, and in this she was abetted by Eden, who said, ‘Git yo’se’f six new dresses from Bal’more.’ And if Susan would not order them, Eden did.

It was this freedom of action that got the slave girl into trouble. One morning when she came back to the big house after having spent the night with Cudjo, Susan reprimanded her, slyly, ‘Make him marry you, Eden. Girls always regret it if they allow the men to take advantage.’ And she felt so warmly toward her slave that she said, ‘Eden, take those two dresses we got from London. Let out the seams and wear them yourself.’

‘You mean it, ma’am?’

‘Yes, I do. You’ve been so kind, and maybe when Cudjo sees you in a new dress it’ll open his eyes.’

So Eden took the expensive dresses, lowered the hems and fitted them to her own handsome figure. Unfortunately, when she first wore the ecru, whose exquisite pale-brown color complemented her own, the first person she met was Mr. Starch, who was beginning to feel his power as future manager of the Steed plantations.

None of the Devon Island slaves liked him; they considered him better suited to handling one of the remote plantations where his ugly manners would remain hidden, and they also feared the changes he might initiate. He was aware of this disaffection and was determined to stamp it out in
these final days of his apprenticeship, so now when sassy Eden came down the graveled walk in her new finery he supposed that she had somehow stolen it from her mistress. ‘She’s an insolent one,’ he muttered as she walked past. He stopped his own work to watch her sashaying over to the forge, and her self-confidence so infuriated him that he took an oath: First thing I do is get rid of that one.

On the first of April 1837 Herman Cline returned to collect his final hundred dollars for breaking Cudjo, and when he entered the office, Uncle Herbert kept him standing, whip under arm, then looked up and asked, ‘Yes?’

‘I’ve come for my hundred.’ Uncle Herbert said nothing, so Cline asked anxiously, ‘You found him proper broke, I trust?’

‘Yes, yes.’

‘Then I can have my money?’

‘Of course you can,’ and Steed counted out the money and once again shoved it forward with a ruler, as if offering it in person might make him partner to Cline in the dirty business. The slave-breaker counted the money, which irritated Steed, then stood uneasily at the desk, showing no intention of departing.

‘What is it?’ Steed asked, obviously irritated.

Cline shifted his weight awkwardly, then said slowly, ‘I got me a peculiar problem.’

Uncle Herbert’s attitude changed dramatically. Leaning forward almost with eagerness, he said, ‘Perhaps I can help.’ It was the type of response Steeds had been making since their plantations began; from Edmund on down they had invariably been concerned about problems along the Choptank, and as Uncle Herbert grew older, his interest in these timeless difficulties increased. He supposed that Cline wanted advice as to how best to develop a farm which was mostly marshland, and he had many ideas on the subject. ‘I’d like to hear your problem, Cline.’

‘Well … it’s thisaway. I got me four bucks, difficult niggers nobody else could handle. Bought ’em cheap and whipped ’em into slaves of real value.’

‘Everyone knows you can do that. What’s the problem?’

‘Well … it just occurred to me and the missus the other day that we’re wastin’ half the value of them niggers.’

Herbert Steed thought he saw what was coming next, and he decided to cut that approach quickly. ‘No, we wouldn’t want to rent them, Cline. They work for you, but I doubt if they’d work for us.’

‘Wait a minute, sir. Wait a minute. That wasn’t my idea at all. What I was wonderin’, you got any young nigger women you want to sell? Ones givin’ you trouble. I need me some breeders.’

‘What was that?’ a voice asked from behind the slave-breaker.

‘Oh, Mr. Starch! I come for my money.’

‘You earned it. Cudjo’s quite tractable these days, thanks to you.’

‘He stayed to inquire,’ Uncle Herbert said, ‘if we had any young females we might sell him … as breeders.’

‘I was wonderin’ when you’d come to that,’ Starch said. ‘Otherwise you’re wastin’ your bucks.’

‘Jist what the missus and me figured. You got any troublemakers you wanta shed?’

‘No …’ Mr. Starch hesitated. Then the picture of sassy Eden in her stolen dress flashed across his eyes and he said slowly, ‘But you might come back the first of June. Maybe we could do business then.’

When Cline departed, Uncle Herbert asked, ‘What’d you have in mind?’ and Starch said that on the far plantation at Broad Creek he had a hussy that was giving trouble, and that here on Devon he had been thinking for some time that this girl Eden ought to be cleared out.

Herbert Steed snapped his fingers. ‘My own conclusion. That nigger is getting more and more uppity.’ He drummed on his desk, then asked, ‘What brought her to your attention?’

‘As I was comin’ along the walk I see her sashayin’ past in a dress I know she stole from Miss Susan.’

‘Send for her.’

Slaves were dispatched to fetch Eden, and they found her at the forge, interfering with the work of Hannibal and Cudjo. ‘Where’d you get that dress?’ Herbert asked severely as she entered the office.

‘Miss Susan, she give it to me.’

‘She never!’ Starch broke in. ‘You stole it.’

Ignoring Starch completely, and looking squarely at Uncle Herbert, Eden said with great firmness, ‘I not steal nothin’. You knows that.’

Pulling her around to face him, Starch bellowed, ‘Don’t you ever speak in that tone. Now get out of here, and get out of that dress.’

When she was gone, Uncle Herbert said, ‘You’re right, that sassy item goes down the bay to Cline’s. He’ll cure her.’

But Eden did not go to her quarters and take off the dress. Instead she appealed to Miss Susan, and soon a slave came knocking at the office door with an imperative message: ‘Miss Susan, she wants to see you gen’lmen.’ And when they reached the mansion this frail lady told them sharply, ‘I gave the dresses to Eden, and she’s to keep them.’

So on the way back to the office, Starch said glumly, ‘She’ll never let us sell Eden to Cline,’ but Uncle Herbert said softly, ‘She doesn’t own Eden any longer. She sold her to get her away from Paul, and he bought her back. She’s Paul’s slave, not Susan’s.’ At this news, Starch chuckled. And it was agreed that they would rush Eden to Cline’s before Paul could intervene.

Cudjo, unaware of what had happened, was directing his full attention to Miss Susan’s chair. He made the wheels so large that they would pass
over bumps easily, then rimmed them in oak. The axle he hammered out of his best iron, finishing the ends in fine squares on which the wheels would fit. He caned the back of the chair and double-caned the bottom, but his ingenuity showed itself in the way he devised a lever which, when pushed forward, would tilt the chair so that Miss Susan could get out of it in a standing position. It was quite inventive, and as it neared completion, numerous visitors were brought to the forge to inspect it.

Herbert Steed said, ‘It was worth paying Cline his hundred and fifty to save this nigger. He’s earned it back with this one chair.’ Later Mr. Starch told his employer, ‘Only thing I don’t like about Cudjo, he’s messin’ around with Eden. We better move her out even faster.’

‘Cline’s due back about the first of June.’

But Starch, eager to shed this possible troublemaker before he assumed control of the plantation, quietly dispatched a sloop to the Little Choptank, advising the slave-breaker that if he were to appear about, say, the first week in May, he could pick himself up a couple, three good breeders, cheap.

By the middle of April the magic chair was finished, and on the fifteenth it was presented to Miss Susan in the sunny room in the west wing. Cudjo wheeled it in proudly, its many coats of varnish shimmering in the sun. Gently he lifted the crippled mistress, placing her on the carefully prepared seat. ‘It be mighty strong, but ’most sof’ as a kitt’n.’

She adjusted her weight and felt how comfortable everything was. ‘Fo’ movin’ the chair, this wheel,’ and he showed her how to guide it up and down the pleasant passageway connecting the west wing to the center section. She had longed for such a chair and moved it with agility, her face beaming. ‘You be pretty good, Miss Susan. But now de bes’ part.’

He pushed the chair to the window, from which the garden was visible, and explained the mystery: ‘Grab hoi’ on this handle, push down, and the chair lif’ you to yo’ feet.’ As the chair moved upward, bringing her to a standing position, a look of astonishment came over her face, but she said nothing, merely took Cudjo’s hands to indicate that he must repeat his instructions, and again she stood.

‘Now let me try,’ she whispered, and he returned her to the table at which she had sat immobile during the fourteen years of her infirmity. Gingerly she turned the big wheels, advancing herself to the window. Braking the chair, she leaned down on the lever and felt the chair ease her forward. Reaching for the sill, she stood erect, then stepped the short distance to the window, from which she looked out at the garden in which she had worked so assiduously. No one spoke. Tears came to her eyes, and finally she turned to her husband. ‘I should have had this chair a dozen years ago.’ And she thanked Cudjo and told Eden, ‘Tell Mammy in the kitchen to serve something special at the forge tonight,’ and there was dancing when the two roast chickens arrived.

But in the morning a slave who had been absent for some days crept to the forge with frightening information. ‘I been sail down Cline’s farm, Little Choptank.’ Instinctively, Cudjo shuddered at mention of that hell. The man continued, ‘Eden, they done sold you to Mr. Cline.’

‘What?’ Cudjo cried.

‘Yas’m. Cline, he tell me to say thet he comin’ one week to fetch her.’

As soon as the informant was gone, Cudjo told Eden what he had never shared before. He described the harsh reality of the Cline farm: the mean shed in which she would sleep; the horrible Cline women, each one worse than the other; the leather strap; the gruesome food; the years with no rest even at Christmas. ‘A man cain’t hardly live one year that way. You gonna kill yorese’f before you take it.’ His lips closed, for he dared not speak as he visualized the alternative: she would be goaded to some terrible act for which she would be hanged at some mournful crossroads.

‘Eden,’ he said quietly, ‘you cain’t go.’ And the plotting began.

Applying finishing touches to the chair became a valid excuse for Cudjo to appear at the big house, and during one trip, while Paul and Susan went upstairs to nap in the bedroom with the two cannonballs, Eden led Cudjo not to the sunroom where he usually worked, but to the little-used east wing where, in a small curtained room, she had long ago found an empty cupboard in which to secrete her cache against the day of her escape; it contained a pistol, a saber, knives, a rope, and a surprisingly large collection of coins in a small canvas bag.

Cudjo was terrified. ‘Eden, Mr. Cline if’n he fin’ a slave wid jes’ the blade of a knife, he beat him fo’ three days till he cain’t walk or lif’ his arm. You be killed fo’ sure fo’ this.’

‘If’n a body try to stop me, I gonna kill ’em. Mastah Paul come at me, he gonna be dead.’

‘Eden, doan’ say that. Mastah Paul, he be good to us.’

‘He good now. But how long?’ And she slipped his hand under her blouse so that he could feel the familiar welts across her back. ‘Who you think done that?’